


like a wink and a smile

by perennial



Category: Far from the Madding Crowd (2015)
Genre: F/M, It's full of secrets, coworkers to bffs, that's why her hair is so big
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 09:08:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12678792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennial/pseuds/perennial
Summary: Liddy isn't six months at Everdene farm before she decides there are too many secrets in the world. Too many secrets, and all of them being told to her.





	like a wink and a smile

Liddy isn't six months at Everdene farm before she decides there are too many secrets in the world. Too many secrets, and all of them being told to her.

Fanny Robbin ran off with a soldier but no one heard news of a marriage. Jan Coggan once saw the cook take the best cuts of meat home for himself but never reported it. Shepherd Hough drinks the cooking sherry in the larder when everyone is sleeping: the housekeeper caught him twice when she was sneaking food, and a housemaid caught him once when she was slinking back in from a tryst with the blacksmith’s son. The blacksmith’s son is really the postman’s son. Eloise, Lily, and Anna are all in love with Gabriel Oak.

Liddy likes Shepherd Oak. He's clear-thinking and has a steady head on his shoulders, far steadier than _some_ she could name. Nice to look at too, though a bit brawny for her taste. But he has kind eyes. And he doesn’t tell her anything she didn’t ask him.

-

Joseph Poorgrass, looking well pleased with himself, strolls out of the woodshed as Liddy is about to enter. She finds Gabriel Oak within, staring at the rows of woodblocks as though asking them how long he must suffer. She knows that expression well; it's the look of a man who has just learned something he wants to unknow.

She has a soft spot for anyone in her mistress's favor so she takes a moment to offer what little comfort she can.

“It’s because she trusts us, I think. If she can confide in us, so can they.”

He tells her, “Joseph drinks a potion of vinegar and fingernail powder every week to grow strong. He’s ashamed he can’t bear the taste of boiled blood, so don’t tell his father he doesn’t add it.”

She nods. “When he’s feeling especially under the weather he adds onions and horsehair.”

So begins a unique companionship. They share the weight of the knowledge they are given, solely to lighten each other’s load, and limited to the two of them. Sometimes the secrets are others’, some they play a part in, some are their own. He’ll whisper in her ear as he passes her in the barnyard; she’ll wander over to him when Miss Everdene goes to inspect the fields where the sheep graze. He’ll lean her way with mischief in his eyes while they’re waiting for the wagons to load; she’ll bring him a cup of tea while he works in the barn.

“Catherine is pregnant and it isn’t Billy’s.”

“Rosa Lee’s husband didn’t go to America, he went to debtor’s prison.”

“The pig that got lost last week? Wasn’t lost. Henry took it home to feed his family. He has seven little ones. I couldn’t even bring myself to report him, gave him a lamb instead.”

“Anders has bedded _all three_ Swanson sisters and none of them know it.”

“Harrison led us on that wild goose chase after a thief because he was too embarrassed to admit he used all his sister’s face cream and then hid the jar.”

“It’s hard sometimes with her. I have to guess at her moods. Some days I’m her friend, others I’m just a farm girl she pays to follow her around. Sometimes I’m both twice over in the course of ten minutes. I wish she’d pick one and stick with it.”

“I shot a dog once—my dog. It wasn’t mean or sick. You might say he was a bad dog but what it boils down to is he made a mistake and I didn’t catch it in time and it ruined my life. Or so I thought at the time. I couldn’t feel anything but rage and despair and I broke a code of mine. I killed an animal who didn’t know he’d done anything wrong.”

There's one secret he never tells her, but she knows anyway.

-

With time, her mistress’s secrets become hers, too, along with a great deal of vocabulary and style of dress. No great things, these secrets, but it is like having a key to the door of Bathsheba’s mind; Liddy hears all her plans and fears for the farm, her schemes for the market, her rationale for wearing certain dresses to certain social occasions. With time, Liddy knows without being asked that her mistress is curious about Farmer Boldwood, or that she wants to know what the other farmers say behind her back; her mistress’s small secrets include a thirst for gossip she is too dignified to acknowledge.

It is a sweet thing to be trusted and a sweeter thing to know all the answers. Liddy keeps no secrets from her mistress; at least, none that Bathsheba asks about directly.

-

And Frank. Liddy knows everything about Frank: what Bathsheba doesn't tell her, Gabriel does; and any gaps are sure to be filled in by the farmhands and pub regulars. The things she knows about her master keep her awake at night, staring at the ceiling in a red rage; she must know more about him than anyone in the whole world does, and hers is the voice that will never be heard or sought or believed.

“I don’t think he knows my name,” she tells Gabriel.

With time, it becomes no uncommon thing for her master to stand in the dining room, screaming for what he deserves, while her mistress sits motionless with her big dark eyes fixed on Liddy like she’s the only thing in the room. These are her mistress’s greatest secrets: that she despises the man she loves; that she loves the man she despises; that he is draining the life from her like water through a sieve.

These are Liddy’s greatest secrets: that she has thought up a way to murder her master that she thinks might really work; that she does not tell Gabriel Oak the truth of her mistress’s state for fear of what he will do.

-

Snow covers the fields and roads and roofs. The farm breathes in the cleansing cold air and watches peace drift down to hide any trace of the old year.

Liddy brings her mistress cups of tea. She reads aloud to the accompaniment of the snapping fire. They lean their foreheads against the freezing glass and watch Shepherd Oak dig a path through the snow to the barn.

The snow gives way to mud and sunshine. Life peeks out from the dirt, then stretches gloriously up toward the open sky. Bathsheba spends an afternoon humming a song Liddy heard Gabriel singing that morning. Grass grows thick in the cemetery.

Liddy watches her mistress’s lantern-light move slowly around the edges of the farm, often coming to rest in the barn. They make lemonade for the church social and Gabriel winks at Liddy when she hands him a glass; “Arnold has just confessed that half a bottle of rye whiskey may have found its way into this concoction,” he tells her. “You had better give the reverend a second glass before he learns the truth; perhaps we can persuade him to put cushions in the pews.”

She clucks at him. “Go eat your cake,” she scolds, and pushes his laughing form toward the dessert table, where her mistress has volunteered to serve. She watches Bathsheba greet him with a wide, warm smile; he leans over to murmur in her ear, and she laughs, then they both turn toward Liddy and hold up their lemonade glasses meaningfully.

There's one secret her mistress never tells her, but she knows anyway.

-

“America,” Gabriel tells her, and she’s horrified.

“You can’t!”

“Oh, little Liddy—”

There are a hundred reasons she can give him to stay but the one that matters most is the one she can’t say. “What will the farm do without you?” she demands. “What will she do? You’re her closest friend, her right-hand man—”

“I must,” he says. “I can’t—stay.”

She looks up at him, into the honest, kind face of the man who is her friend, too. “She’s letting you go?”

Gabriel looks down so that his hat hides his face. He picks up her hand and lifts his head, and now he is smiling. He bows over her hand.

“Goodbye, my littlest friend,” he says, trying to tug a smile out of her, and she gives one to him because how can she withhold this small thing he asks of her?

“Gabriel Oak,” she says as he turns away. He looks back. She says, “Arnold wasn’t the only one who spiked the lemonade,” and this time her grin is real.

-

The morning is sunny and clear but there is a gloom in the hall reminiscent of a cold November night.

At dawn Liddy had watched Gabriel walk away—across the yard, through the gate, down the road—until the peak of his hat vanished. He is gone, really gone; and still her mistress sits at the table with papers strewn around her, letting him get further and further away from them. Liddy wears her misery like the open wound it is; and she knows her mistress well enough to know that under Bathsheba’s stoical mask their faces are a matching set.

 _Go,_ she wants to say, _for both your sakes. Can’t you feel your heart breaking?_ Instead she waits.

Bathsheba shoves her chair back and hurtles out of the room. The house is quiet, so quiet that her progress can be tracked if one listens carefully: up the stairs to her dressing room, down the stairs to the main entry, across the yard to the stable—and then, after a few excruciating minutes: hoofbeats in the yard, through the gate, down the road.

Liddy falls to her knees to hug Old George.

-

Bathsheba finds her in the sun parlor.

“I’ve something to tell you,” she says—eyes bright, face radiant with happiness.

Liddy’s face fills with her widest, gladdest smile.

“Oh miss,” she says, “I know.”


End file.
